I think your key points that there are underlying realities that most traditional gender roles are based on and that demographics will play a key role are spot on. If I might add three things that I think are relevant to build on the above:
1) Back when I was in the army, a friend of mine of a rather conservative and religious persuasion lent me a book on traditional fatherhood. It made the excellent point that the "Leave It to Beaver" idea of "traditional" family values (or the Victorian one, for that matter, as you point out in your footnote) was actually a product of industrialization. In pre-industrial society (this book focused mainly on colonial America as a positive example), the womenfolk contributed rather a lot economically through cottage crafts like spinning, sewing, weaving, and so forth. As you and methyethyl above commented, these roles were respected, acknowledged as important, but as different from what men did to contribute. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name or author of the book and haven't been able to dig it up, and my friend can't find it on his shelf.
2) Coming directly from point 1), in that social prestige tends to be pretty tightly correlated with economic contribution, in your reply to methylethyl above, you mention that PMC office jobs are the high status jobs to get. Even in cases where you can work out alternate economically-satisfactory arrangements, a lot of modern women don't feel like they're living up to their potential or being valued, independent human beings unless they have a job that pays well and confers high status. Then you get into the trap of "if both parents are working, you need daycare, and if you want to pay for daycare, both of you need well-paying jobs" (ask me how I know about this one). As you say, as these kinds of arrangements become economically unviable, I expect a lot of return to mom, grandma, aunts, and neighbors watch each other's kids while the men go do physically demanding stuff outside.
3) One big factor that I think underlies a lot of what changed along with what will likely change again in a deindustrial world is readily available, effective, and convenient birth control. Having a liberated sexual life is a lot more desirable if you can be reasonably sure you won't end up with an unwanted baby and no one to help take care of it. When it comes to the sexual norms attached to gender roles, they tend to be some kind of negotiated truce between men's desire to not raise kids that aren't their own and women's desire to have a man (or more rarely, men) around to help take care of her and the kids. I suspect that as sex starts leading more reliably to kids again, women will start relearning the wisdom of "why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?" and men will start demanding some concessions of their own. Whichever groups or communities start figuring this out sooner will likely do better than folks who try to cling to either a childless life or unrestrained promiscuity.
If I somehow got to design the future, I would love for women to be able to retain the option to live whatever kind of life they want, and for men and women to be treated as equally worthwhile and worthy of respect, even if the default is that men and women tend to do different work, have different social lives, and so on. Given what times of decline and dark ages have looked like in the past, I don't have especially high hopes, but I guess we (and our descendants) will see.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2022-07-09 11:08 pm (UTC)1) Back when I was in the army, a friend of mine of a rather conservative and religious persuasion lent me a book on traditional fatherhood. It made the excellent point that the "Leave It to Beaver" idea of "traditional" family values (or the Victorian one, for that matter, as you point out in your footnote) was actually a product of industrialization. In pre-industrial society (this book focused mainly on colonial America as a positive example), the womenfolk contributed rather a lot economically through cottage crafts like spinning, sewing, weaving, and so forth. As you and methyethyl above commented, these roles were respected, acknowledged as important, but as different from what men did to contribute. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name or author of the book and haven't been able to dig it up, and my friend can't find it on his shelf.
2) Coming directly from point 1), in that social prestige tends to be pretty tightly correlated with economic contribution, in your reply to methylethyl above, you mention that PMC office jobs are the high status jobs to get. Even in cases where you can work out alternate economically-satisfactory arrangements, a lot of modern women don't feel like they're living up to their potential or being valued, independent human beings unless they have a job that pays well and confers high status. Then you get into the trap of "if both parents are working, you need daycare, and if you want to pay for daycare, both of you need well-paying jobs" (ask me how I know about this one). As you say, as these kinds of arrangements become economically unviable, I expect a lot of return to mom, grandma, aunts, and neighbors watch each other's kids while the men go do physically demanding stuff outside.
3) One big factor that I think underlies a lot of what changed along with what will likely change again in a deindustrial world is readily available, effective, and convenient birth control. Having a liberated sexual life is a lot more desirable if you can be reasonably sure you won't end up with an unwanted baby and no one to help take care of it. When it comes to the sexual norms attached to gender roles, they tend to be some kind of negotiated truce between men's desire to not raise kids that aren't their own and women's desire to have a man (or more rarely, men) around to help take care of her and the kids. I suspect that as sex starts leading more reliably to kids again, women will start relearning the wisdom of "why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?" and men will start demanding some concessions of their own. Whichever groups or communities start figuring this out sooner will likely do better than folks who try to cling to either a childless life or unrestrained promiscuity.
If I somehow got to design the future, I would love for women to be able to retain the option to live whatever kind of life they want, and for men and women to be treated as equally worthwhile and worthy of respect, even if the default is that men and women tend to do different work, have different social lives, and so on. Given what times of decline and dark ages have looked like in the past, I don't have especially high hopes, but I guess we (and our descendants) will see.